The 911 emergency service is a critical piece of infrastructure, which can provide much needed emergency police, firefighting or medical help to a caller able simply to dial the numerals “911”. Ideally, a 911 service routes a call for help to a nearby response center which can dispatch help that will reach the caller in a timely fashion. Also ideally, the 911 emergency response center has accurate information about the subscriber's address associated with the caller's telephone number, so emergency assistance will be dispatched to the proper location. Finally, it is desirable that the 911 service center maintains certain useful information about residents at the subscriber's location, such as whether they are elderly or disabled or have medical conditions requiring special assistance in an emergency. (While the described emergency assistance services typically are known as “911” services, because of the way they are accessed, they may be accessed in other ways and be known by other names. For convenience, we refer to them herein as “911” services but mean this term to include other similar services.)
Ordinarily, a typical subscriber has no way to test that 911 service is working from a given telephone, or to verify that a given 911 call is routed to the correct emergency response center, since in most jurisdictions it is a misdemeanor to place a 911 call when no emergency exists.
Similarly, a typical subscriber has no way to find out whether the information, such as address information, that the 911 service associates with the subscriber's telephone number is accurate, because 911 information is generally gathered from third-party sources such as telephone-subscriber databases. Some response centers maintain data to identify the presence of elderly or disabled persons at an address. The vast majority of users who rely on 911 service have no way to verify or update their personal information (i.e., ensure that the system has their correct street address, city, and state, or personal information).
A number of recent developments complicate the provision of 911 services. Telephone number portability, which allows a customer to retain the customer's existing telephone number in a new location, makes routing of 911 calls problematic if call routing is based on associating an area or exchange code with a particular 911 response center location.
Likewise, the current practice of expanding the number of available telephone numbers by overlaying new area codes on old ones presents the same call routing difficulties.
Moreover, certain kinds of personal information that would be useful for an emergency responder to know, such as medical conditions, are subject to change with time and emergency response centers are ill-adapted to update such information without the assistance of the subscriber.
Also, the use of mobile telephones presents additional problems for assigning a call to an emergency response center. Typically, a mobile caller dialing 911 is connected to an emergency response center in the vicinity of the cell tower handling the call, but practices differ and a caller far from home may find his or her 911 call is set up to be answered by an emergency response center in another state. It would be useful for a mobile caller to know if this is the case.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a method for enabling a telephone subscriber to verify the status of 911 services, the location of the emergency response center that is associated with the subscriber's number, and the accuracy of information associated with the subscriber or other residents at the location of the telephone linked to 911 service. There is a further need to provide communications systems arranged and configured to enable such a self-testing method to be employed.